On 08/10/2021 13:30, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) wrote: > Hi Jonny, > > On 10/8/21 1:19 PM, Jonny Grant wrote: >> Hello >> >> https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/malloc.3.html >> >> "The free() function frees the memory space pointed to by ptr, >> which must have been returned by a previous call to malloc(), >> calloc(), or realloc(). " >> > > Agree that this is somewhat wrong. > >> >> Could this list refer to the other ways memory can be allocated too? free() accepts other memory. >> posix_memalign >> aligned_alloc >> memalign >> valloc >> pvalloc >> reallocarray >> >> That would be changing it to say :- >> >> "The free() function frees the memory space pointed to by ptr, >> which must have been returned by a previous call to malloc(), >> calloc(), realloc(), posix_memalign(), aligned_alloc(), memalign(), valloc(), reallocarray() or pvalloc()" > > I don't like that list. It is incomplete (the first one that comes to my mind is asprintf(3)). Either we provide a _complete_ list of functions that can be free(3)d, which I think will be difficult to keep up to date, or we use the same wording as POSIX, and say that it deallocates memory allocated as if by malloc(3). > > > What are your thoughts? That sounds reasonable. "deallocates" sounds better than "frees" Kind regards Jonny
